According to Army of the Dead director Zack Snyder, some of the movie's zombies may actually be more heroic than the human characters.
The film stars Dave Bautista as Scott Ward, a veteran of the zombie war who assembles a team of mercenaries to break into Las Vegas -- which has been overrun by zombies -- and steal $200 million from an abandoned casino before the U.S. government destroys the city in order to contain the zombie plague. Along the way, Scott and his crew come face to face with two types of zombies: the traditional, slow-moving kind and Alphas, which are more organized and move faster. In an interview with Empire Magazine, Snyder explained how the Alphas add some moral ambiguity to the movie's heist plot.
"I want the audience to get a chance at having sympathy," he explained. "Alphas have consciousness and they're self-aware and they're not like us. So I wanted to create this moral ambiguity about whether or not humans that we love in the movie crossed a line. Was there a thing that they did to the Alphas, when the Alphas were minding their own business? And therefore, do the Alphas have [the] moral high ground? It muddies the water, in a good way."
The Army of the Dead trailer shows the film's humans fighting off a literal army of Alpha zombies within Las Vegas' borders, including what appears to be their queen. "They're fucking zombie superheroes," Bautista said. "The Alpha zombies are just complete badasses. The athleticism of some of these people [playing the Alphas], I've never had and never will have in my life."
In a live Q&A hosted by Netflix following the film's trailer premiere, Snyder said the chance to build Army of the Dead's zombie mythology from the ground-up was a big part of what inspired him to make it. "I really wanted to make a movie that, with the universe... I kind of can be the extreme authority on, and therefore, allow the audience just to be on a ride. And that is purely by design," he explained.
Directed and co-written by Zack Snyder, Army of the Dead stars Dave Bautista, Garret Dillahunt, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Raul Castillo, Tig Notaro, Theo Rossi and Ana de la Reguera. The film arrives on Netflix May 21.
Source: Empire Magazine